New stairs, day 1
Today Jordan (a finish carpenter from Amish country) started on our stairs. The day was spent carefully planning the new rough framing and cutting one stringer. It’s painful to see so little progress after one full day, but I know a lot of ground has been covered and things will go faster from here.
It ended up working out that I also received delivery of most of the unfinished white oak stair parts from Hiland today. The foyer is filled up with treads, risers, skirt boards, handrail, and other odds and ends.
After Jordan left for the day, I put dye stain on a few pieces of skirt board. We have been going back and forth on the wisdom of prefinishing certain pieces of wood. There are many advantages to finishing everything in situ, but it also sounds like such a pain. So I found myself staining skirt boards at 8 pm on a wednesday evening and frantically applying a wash coat of Arm-R-Seal to lock it in. I think I’ll plan to pre-finish certain especially inconvenient pieces.